Selkie Quotes

“It occurred to me that there have always been selkie women: women who did not seem to belong to this world, because they did not fit into prevailing notions of what women were supposed to be. And if you did not fit into those notions, in some sense you weren't a woman. Weren't even quite human. The magical animal woman is, or can be, a metaphor for those sorts of women.”
― Theodora Goss

“Gwen?"
"Yes."
"You know why we have to be together, don't you?"
"..."
"I'm your selkie.”
― Terri Farley, Seven Tears Into the Sea

“She had been nothing but a beloved bauble passed from a mother to a son, a decoration of vanity, devoid of identity.”
― D. Morgenstern

“In grave danger of suffocation, the mermaid peeled away from him and emitted a sonar wail that woke drowned sailors from their oyster beds.”
― Kevin Ansbro, The Minotaur's Son & Other Wild Tales

“As she always did, when she went over the dune and saw the waves crashing on the shore, her heart leapt inside her in excitement. She still had a love affair with the ocean.”
― Sharon Brubaker, Between Earth and Sea: A Selkie Tale

“The place was in her blood, her bones, and her soul. Perhaps it was that siren song that called to her when she saw the edge where the water met the sky. Perhaps it was the peacefulness of the community itself. She didn't know.”
― Sharon Brubaker, Between Earth and Sea: A Selkie Tale

“Gentle swells had replaced the angry waves of yesterday. The gentle breakers made their way to shore glinting with green as they somersaulted to shore. The waves showed an edge of lacy foam that caressed the sand. It was peaceful.”
― Sharon Brubaker, Between Earth and Sea: A Selkie Tale

“I push my eye farther into the crack, smushing my cheek. The door rattles.
Her arm freezes. The needle stops. Instantly, her shadow fills the room, a mountain on the wall.
“Leidah?”
I hold my breath. No hiding in the wood-box this time. Before I even have time to pull my eye away, the door opens. My mother's face, like the moon in the dark hallway. She squints and takes a step toward me. “Lei-lee?”
I want to tell her I’ve had a nightmare about the Sisters, that I can’t sleep with all this whispering and worrying from her—and what are you sewing in the dark, Mamma? I try to move my lips, but I have no mouth. My tongue is gone; my nose is gone. I don’t have a face anymore.
It has happened again.
I am lying on my back, flatter than bread. My mother’s bare feet slap against my skin, across my belly, my chest. She digs her heel in, at my throat that isn’t there. I can see her head turning toward her bedroom. Snores crawl under the closed door. The door to my room is open, but she can’t see my bed from where she stands, can’t see that my bed is empty. She nods to herself: everything as it should be. Her foot grinds into my chin. The door to the sewing room closes behind her.
I struggle to sit up. I wiggle my hips and jiggle my legs. It is no use. I am stuck, pressed flat into the grain of wood under me.
But it’s not under me. It is me.
I have become the floor.
I know it’s true, even as I tell myself I am dreaming, that I am still in bed under the covers. My blood whirls inside the wood knots, spinning and rushing, sucking me down and down. The nicks of boot prints stomp and kick at my bones, like a bruise. I feel the clunk of one board to the next, like bumps of a wheel over stone. And then I am all of it, every knot, grain, and sliver, running down the hall, whooshing like a river, ever so fast, over the edge and down a waterfall, rushing from room to room. I pour myself under and over and through, feeling objects brush against me as I pass by. Bookshelves, bedposts, Pappa’s slippers, a fallen dressing gown, the stubby ends of an old chair. A mouse hiding inside a hole in the wall. Mor’s needle bobbing up and down.
How is this possible?
I am so wide, I can see both Mor and Far at the same time, even though they are in different rooms, one wide awake, the other fast asleep. I feel my father’s breath easily, sinking through the bed into me, while Mor’s breath fights against me, against the floor. In and out, each breath swimming away, away, at the speed of her needle, up up up in out in out outoutout—let me out, get me out, I want out.
That’s what Mamma is thinking, and I hear it, loud and clear. I strain my ears against the wood to get back into my own body. Nothing happens. I try again, but this time push hard with my arms that aren’t there. Nothing at all. I stop and sink, letting go, giving myself into the floor.
Seven, soon to be eight… it’s time, time’s up, time to go.
The needle is singing, as sure as stitches on a seam. I am inside the thread, inside her head. Mamma is ticking—onetwothreefourfivesix—
Seven. Seven what? And why is it time to go?
Don’t leave me, Mamma. I beg her feet, her knees, her hips, her chest, her heart, my begging spreading like a big squid into the very skin of her.
It’s then that I feel it.
Something is happening to Mamma. Something neither Pappa nor I have noticed.
She is becoming dust.
She is drier than the wood I have become.

- Becoming Leidah

Quoted by copying text from the epub version using BlueFire e-reader.”
― Michelle Grierson, Becoming Leidah

“His lightest touch brought joy, brought comfort and a sense of belonging.”
― Sharon Brubaker, Between Earth and Sea: A Selkie Tale

“I hate selkie stories. They're always about how you went up to the attic to look for a book, and you found a disgusting old coat and brought it downstairs between finger and thumb and said "What's this?", and you never saw your mom again.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The New Voices of Fantasy

“She’s not your mother. She’s not a woman; she’s not even human. From the moment she went over, we lost her just as surely as if she’d died. They do not live for our benefit. They belong to Themselves.”

I remembered the rolling otter and its sweet-looking paws – dashing that urchin with the rock and the blood staining the water. I remembered the jewel-red carb – dragging that scavenged flesh into the sea grass. I’d found them comical, and pretty, but they were their own creatures too, just as my aunt had said, and busy with the job of living. They probably didn’t even see me. I remembered the way the cave spiders and suchlike scurried to hide from me in the rocks.

They were not there for us. They had their own mysterious life living inside them. Their world was not my world, their story not mine.”
― Ananda Braxton-Smith, Merrow

“A greedy man can never learn the language of the sea.”
― Gillian McClure, Selkie

“What were you singing?" Merritt asked. "A lullaby?"
"An old song from the islands, about a selkie." Seeing the word was unfamiliar, he explained, "A changeling, who looks like a seal in the water but takes the form of a man on land. In the song he woos a human maiden, who gives birth to his son. Seven years later, he comes back to take the child." Keir hesitated before adding absently, "But before they leave, the selkie tells the mother he'll give the boy a gold chain to wear on his neck, so she'll recognize him if they meet someday."
"Are she and her son ever reunited?" Merritt asked.
Keir shook his head. "Someone brings her the gold chain one day, and she realizes he's dead. Shot by-" He broke off as he saw Merritt's face begin to crumple. "Och," he exclaimed softly. "No... dinna do that..."
"It's so terribly sad," she said in a watery voice, damning herself for being emotional.
A chuckle broke from Keir as he moved closer. "I won't tell you the rest, then." His hand cupped the side of her face, his thumb wiping an escaping tear. "'Tis only a song, lass. Ah, you've a tender heart." His blue eyes sparkled as he looked down at her. "I warn you, no more tears or I'll have to put you on my shoulder and pat you asleep as I did the bairnie."
It left Merritt temporarily speechless, that he sincerely seemed to believe she would regard that as a threat.”
― Lisa Kleypas, Devil in Disguise

“SELKIE
Alone, the cold body of the selkie man lay upon the sand, so like the drowned one the widow had called for.
For her longing, he was hauled upon the sand, exposed to the moonlight.
The selkie strained in fraught movements and human form broke from the gleaming seal fur.
Undeniably he bore the image of the widow’s lost husband and spoke with the sounds of the dead man’s voice.
She hailed back from the rocks.
Shadows accumulating beyond the moon’s ability to reform.
Colours were washed from sight and silver crashed through her, colder than snow dreams of being.
In the dark, the ocean became the rolling flanks of a great beast drifting back across the horizon.
Out deep soon, the land’s drop sharp.”
― Tamara Rendell, Mystical Tides

“He looked so frustrated and perfectly serious, and yet here we were talking about his missing seal pelt.”
― Katherine McIntyre, By the Sea